Tuning In: Tom Caron the before and after look of Red Sox playoffs

"I always joke with Don that he is the voice of the network," Caron said, "and I'm the face of the network. You see me more than you see him, but you certainly hear him more. When the game's on, it's his show."

Now it's Caron's show exclusively. Orsillo no longer handles the play-by-play of Red Sox because the national networks own exclusive rights to the postseason games, but Caron continues to serve as NESN's pregame and postgame host.

The studio shows last longer than when Caron hosted them in 2004 and 2007, when the Sox won the World Series. The pregame shows last an hour and the postgame shows about an hour and a half, running well past midnight most nights. This year, for the first time, the home postgame shows air from NESN's stage on Yawkey Way outside Fenway Park instead of inside NESN's studio in Watertown.

After David Ortiz hit his game-tying grand slam to help the Sox rally to win Game 2 of the ALCS at Fenway Park, fans celebrated on Yawkey Way behind Caron as he hosted the postgame show.

"When you have a game like that," Caron said, "the energy kind of carries you for a long time, but there are other nights where it feels pretty late."

Caron remembers people walking around like zombies in 2004 after staying up late to watch the Red Sox. That tired but happy feel is back, one year after the Sox finished last in the AL East.

"I don't know if this year can happen without last year," Caron said. "They needed more than a tweak. They needed a reset. If things didn't go as badly as they did (last year), then they probably never make that trade with the Dodgers and without that, you never bring in guys like (Shane) Victorino and (Mike) Napoli and (Jonny) Gomes and Koji (Uehara)."

NESN has learned to set up barriers to keep fans away from the stage on Yawkey Way, but years ago fans would get an up-close look by climbing onto each other's shoulders.

"Early on," Caron recalled, "I'd look over to my left at Jim Rice or someone and it was almost like there was another face in between us. I'm like, 'Who is this guy?'?"

Fans still sometimes ask players for autographs while Caron interviews them on the air during pregame shows. Nevertheless, Yawkey Way makes for interesting television. Caron compares the wild scene to "College GameDay Live" on ESPN.

During a pregame interview, an opposing team player — Caron believes it was Toronto knuckleballer R.A. Dickey — looked back over Yawkey Way and said, "There's nothing like this in baseball."

With the ALCS in Detroit this week, Caron, analyst Dennis Eckersley and a couple of producers have been watching the games in the studio and preparing what they'll discuss on the postgame shows. Caron keeps score on an old-fashioned scorecard and listens to Eckersley's insights. And, yes, Eckersley uses his same unique lingo, such as "that was high cheddar with some hair on it" when he watches games with Caron, as he does on the air afterward.

"That is the only way Eck speaks," Caron said. "None of that is affected. That is pure Eck. He coined the phrase 'walk off' (as in hit or home run) back when he was a pitcher. He has a different way of looking at things and a different way of saying things, but it's genuine."

Caron has been working with Eckersley for so long, he can understand him without checking out an Eck app and, yes, there is such a thing.

After the Sox eliminated the Rays in the ALDS in Tampa, Caron served as a traffic cop for NESN's postgame coverage that switched back and forth from the studio to Orsillo, Adam Pellerin and Jenny Dell on the field, to Dell interviewing Sox players celebrating in the clubhouse, to live interviews at the podium.

"There's a lot of juggling," Caron said. "The producer and I talk about the K-Gun offense. You kind of set up the first few plays and then you have no idea where it's going to go."

Caron could be in the middle of a sentence only to have a producer yell in his ear to cut away to a live interview at the podium. As a former reporter, he understands what fans want to see.

"What people are watching for more than anything else is player reaction," Caron said. "That's what we do pretty well compared to what you're going to see on a national postgame show. I don't want to get in the way of that."

While Caron has been busy with the Sox lately, he has made sure to fit in time with his family. He drove to Shrewsbury Wednesday to have lunch with his son, Jack, a junior at St. John's High.

Today is Caron's 21st wedding anniversary, but he won't see his wife, Kelley, tonight because he'll be at NESN hosting the Red Sox pregame and postgame shows. They have dinner planned for Legal Sea Foods on Friday, but Caron said he'd probably wish Kelley a happy anniversary on the air tonight.

"I'll do it during the pregame show," he said, "because I'm not sure if she'll still be awake after. There are no guarantees for the postgame show."